


Theodicy

by nirejseki



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, F/M, Gen, Greek Mythology - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 16:04:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7470054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Theodicy, noun, the vindication of divine goodness and providence in view of the existence of evil.</p>
<p>Response to tumblr prompt: Coldwave, Hades and Persephone - Len is Hades, Mick is Persephone</p>
            </blockquote>





	Theodicy

Like most children of the Harvest, Mick’s got a thing with plants.

Sort of.

Just because _certain other people_ don’t believe that brushfires and wildfires are plant-related doesn’t make them any less critical to the process of rebirth and regeneration.

So when Mick walks through the fields, he is wreathed in flame and his footprints are marked in the dirt and ashes he leaves behind. Giant oaks bend and break before him; willows scream as his flames flicker up their long, ragged leaves; the grasses hiss and lean away from him as if it will help. No one ever pays attention to the little green shoots that poke their heads up where his feet have passed, the new coming in to replace the old; no one ever notices that after the devastation he leaves behind, there is rampant growth, a good harvest for a generation, growth and life that eclipses in quantity and quality that which came before.

He’s not exactly very popular.

This is probably why his Mother gave him to the Lightning God, king of the skies, as a ward. The Lightning God may be the king of the land, but he’s a little uncertain about the whole thing; it hasn’t been that long since he deposed his father, Time, and assumed the throne.

(Honestly, Barry’s a little embarrassed by the whole thing and he tells Mick as much when he welcomes him into his home – it wasn’t that he _wanted_ to be king of the gods, you see, Barry says apologetically, but rather that Eobard was such a _terrible_ ruler and he was hurting Barry’s siblings, all of whom Barry loves deeply and fondly and usually best when they are each off their own way, if rumor has it right.)

Barry’s already got two wards – Wally West, son of the Lord of the Western Sea, herald of the sea and an excitable fellow and Jessie Quick, the patron of mischief, who flies on winged sandals and can nearly (not quite) beat Barry in a race. Mick doesn’t fit in with them, though they try to make him welcome. But they’re young and cheerful and _bouncy_ ; they’re here because their parents wanted them to have the best possible education, the best possible future, not because they’re _ashamed_ of having a child like them. Like Mick, to be precise, who earns his many-eyed Mother no accolades and no prayers, who is, if anything, only a burden.

Whatever. He has fire, and fire has him, and they are _very happy together_ , thank you.

At least with Barry there’s hope of some better life beyond the loneliness he’s got now, where even the nymphs won’t linger too long by his side for fear of burning. Mick’s got no way of changing his godhood to something a little less damaging if he doesn’t change from who he is, the wild child of the Harvest, and gain another title, something else to mark his name and his nature; marriage is the easiest way to do that for a god. But his Mother made it clear that she wouldn’t approve of him taking a spouse of any nature, even if he gathered up the bride-price himself; she said he would burn them to a crisp, and then where would they be but paying reparations?

Mick had argued with her that he could find someone resistant to – one of the Sun’s children, perhaps, or someone of the Smith God’s bent, perhaps, Mick’s not picky about little things like beauty if it means he won’t be alone – but his Mother turned her face away from him and denied him once more. Not even if someone paid the bride-price for him would she approve his marriage, she declared, eyes focused on her hand-picked cult of would-be suicides, and that was of course the most unlikely bit of all, given how big and burly and burned Mick is after his years in the flame. 

Here, though, in Barry’s house, the palace of the gods, Mick’s maybe got a chance. As his guardian, Barry now has final say over his marriage, not his Mother, and maybe he’ll get a shot, even if he hasn’t collected a proper bride price or anything. No matter. First he has to find a bride he won’t burn.

The Smith God is basically useless, smiling awkwardly and shuffling his feet and saying that he wished he could help, but honestly he’s not even being terribly successful with wooing his _own_ bride at the moment. 

Mick raises an eyebrow.

Cisco blushes and mutters something about the goddess of beauty, a woman lovely as gold, etc. etc. Mick rolls his eyes and goes his own way. The Smith God’s companion, the Lady Snow, is equally useless; in hope, he kisses her on the hand, but she flinches away from him. Mick’s not sure if it’s the flame or his face, but either way his interest dissolves to nothingness. He will not be merely _tolerated_ , not even for a title, not even for a new godhead, not for _nothing_. The whole point of this is to have company.

And after all, even if this desperate hare-brained scheme of his should fail, he will still have the fire.

The Sun is equally unable to help; she smiles, her teeth bright in her dark face, and promises him that she’ll look for someone for him, reminds him that she sees all that the light touches, but Mick points out in return that she cannot see _him_ when he walks, for he is shrouded in the smokes of his fire. Iris winces and acknowledges his point with a sigh, but she promises to look. She walks off, hand-in-hand with the bright Dawn, his hair pale gold and his face ruddy and pink; their marriage is expected shortly. Barry’s beside himself trying to figure out how to write “Iris and Eddie forever” in lightning – he’s quite sure he can do it, but he isn’t sure how to get everyone to look in the right direction at the right time to catch the split second of text. (He’s been considering just making it a constellation instead, but that’s so _overdone_ as a wedding gift, and he really wants to wish Iris the best.)

Mick escapes the palace, where everyone is full of joy and happiness and romance is _literally_ in the air, skating around whistling and shouting out the occasional rude comment, and all he wants is some peace and quiet.

He goes down to walk in the fields, far away from the mountain ever wreathed in clouds, far away from Mother’s watchful eyes, and his flames come with him, dancing around his heels.

“You call _that_ a flame?” a voice drawls.

Mick turns, frowning, and beholds – 

Well, he’s not sure what he beholds, or who, other than that the man or god or creature, whoever he is, is _gorgeous_. He’s dressed in mourning colors, all black as a moonless night, and his eyes are slate grey. His cheekbones are sharp enough to cut, and his smirk speaks of mysteries that Mick would be very interested in learning more about. He’s lounging on a large rock, limbs supine but far from unguarded, his legs crossed nonchalantly in a way that suggests a casualness that is belied by the intensity of his gaze. 

Still, Mick’s got his pride. He crosses his arms. “I wouldn’t say it’s my best work,” he says, his flames rising up in answer to his turbulent emotions, reaching his knees, and then his hips. “But I’m trying to keep it down.”

“Why?” the man asks, smirking. “You seem like the type that ought to get all _fired_ up.”

Mick stares at him, momentarily dumbfounded. 

It’s the god of bad puns. Mick wasn’t aware that there _was_ one of those, but surely there must be, because that one was bad enough that it _had_ to have been offered up as a sacrifice to the gods, along with the other human scraps not deemed good enough for human consumption, like the bones and the stripes of fat burned to ashes.

“Anyway, I’ve got a _burning_ question for you – ”

Mick involuntarily snickers.

The other god’s smirk widens in response – and it has to be a god; any mortal would have been scorched standing less than ten feet away from Mick, and even with divinity Mick marvels at the man’s tolerance.

“You got a lot more of those?” Mick asks, amused.

The man bats his pretty eyelashes. “Me? Oh, I’m just _warming up_.”

Mick laughs.

It’s been a while since he laughed.

Pretty, a sense of humor, and no shame in the slightest, all the things Mick likes in a man.

“So what’s your question?” Mick says, still not willing to give much more than an inch but smiling, just a little.

“I heard through some friends of mine that you’re looking to meet your _match_.”

“That’s true,” Mick acknowledges. “But everything I touch I burn to ash.”

The god smiles and jumps to his feet, striding forward in a burst of speed before Mick can retreat for the man’s own good, and he puts his hand on Mick’s shoulder.

His hand is as cold as ice.

“Lucky for me, I’ve always done well with ashes,” the god says, smiling, even as Mick gapes at the lack of damage, at how the flames flicker at the man’s sides and are brushed away unharmed. There must be more power in bad jokes than Mick had thought.

“Well,” Mick says, raising his hand to cover the other god’s hand, marveling at how cold it is, how smooth, how delightful the touch of another hand can be. “You’ve certainly _brightened_ my day.”

The god barks out a surprised burst of laughter, clearly not having expected that.

“Indeed,” Mick continues thoughtfully. “One might say that you’ve positively set my heart _ablaze_.”

The god starts laughing. “Oh, I like you!” he says gleefully. “I knew I would – or I thought I would, anyway; there’s only so much intel you can get about someone from studying them from a distance. People are so much more complicated than banks.”

“You’re a thief?” Mick says, intrigued.

“Of sorts,” the god replies. “I steal away people’s most precious possessions – and sometimes their gold and jewels, too, though I like to give those back at unexpected times. That’s part of the godhood, you know; the thieving’s just a hobby.”

Mick grins. “Nice hobby.”

“Oh, it’s far better than that,” the god says. “I’ve gotten myself something of a reputation as thief that steals away in the night, and for all that I’m a god of treasure too – and now it seems here that I’ve found myself a treasure today, too, hidden away where no one’s looking. Come with me and be my partner?”’

Mick steps forward and presses his lips to the other god’s, intending for that to be his answer.

It is his answer, but he gets a bit distracted with the kissing. They both do. For a while.

By the time they pull apart, there’s a rampaging inferno around them, smoke hiding them from the Sun and the Moon alike, the flush is high on Mick’s cheeks and the other god is pale but more a little dazed, and Mick can feel his _interest_ pressing up against him. Not tolerance, oh no, not mere _tolerance_ at all. 

“Come with me,” the god pleads. “Come with me; be my partner in all things.”

Mick rolls his eyes. “Yes, you idiot; of course yes,” he says. “You’re not that good at reading body language, are you?”

“I’m better at reading bodies,” the god says solemnly, his lips twitching with amusement at some untold joke. “But in this case, I need your verbal consent, if I’m to steal you away.”

Mick arches his eyebrows. 

The god grins wickedly, a grin that invites Mick to share in his confidences and his little joke. “I asked Barry earlier today if I could have one thing of his, in honor of Iris’ wedding,” he tells Mick. His grin widens. “I didn’t specify what, exactly, I wanted, but I gave him a bride-price for you – the secret of how to freeze lightning. It’s a skill unknown even to the king of the gods, a secret of my own devising, and it is beyond price – but I gave it gladly, and would again.”

“You know I’ve already said yes, right?” Mick says, but he can feel the flush on his cheeks go darker and his knees go weak.

“I don’t want you to come out of practicality,” the god says. “I want you to _love_ me – for I am, I’m afraid, very hard to love.”

“I think I’ll give it a go,” Mick says. “Now that you’ve won me, o god of bad jokes and thefts in the night and of cold, tell me your name.”

“Leonard,” the god says, naming the Unsaid and Unseen, Barry’s long-gone brother, ruler of the Underworld and master of invisibility. “But you can call me Len.”

The ground shook and split before them; a chariot emerges, large and dark, and they climb aboard in order to drive down to the endless Gardens from which no mortal man returns. Just before they go, Mick catches the glimpse of something, he knows not what, at the edge of his vision, something green and gold and familiar, a blinking eye, but then they are beneath the earth and he puts the thought of it aside.

“Sorry for the mess,” Len drawls, waving around at the Underworld: its great river, the Styx, upon which the gods swear unbreakable oaths; the fearful oarsman who collects the souls for passage; the grey fields of Asphodel beyond, the flickering light of Tartarus out in the distance to the left, the steady glow of the Elysian Fields to the right. “I’m not much for neatness – say, what do you think of marrying by boat? All captains have the right of marriage, given to them as their right from the beginning of time, and Charon is as much as Captain as any.”

“On the _Styx_?” Mick exclaims, slightly horrified. The penalty for breaking a vow made on the Styx is beyond conception; he has no idea what marriage vows would do.

“Oh, no,” Len says immediately. “That would just piss it off; trust me, I know. I was thinking more along the lines of the Phlegethon – the river of fire.”

“Oh, I _like_ you,” Mick says. “By all means, let’s get this done before my Mother can intervene.”

The marriage itself is surprisingly pleasant, with Charon as their priest and the river nymphs swimming up to watch (one, called Lethe, is rather grumpy; Len teases her back to happiness, names her Hannibal Bates, and tells Mick that she’s every man, every woman, who has drunk of her waters, but that it confuses her sometimes to know which one). 

The marriage _night_ is even more pleasant.

They don’t leave their newly broken-in marriage bed for a week, and even then it’s only with Death herself rapping on their door in annoyance and declaring that _she_ wasn’t going to keep bringing souls down if Len wouldn’t get off his fat ass and judge them already. Direct quote. 

“Thanks, as ever, for your input, Shawna,” Len grumbles. “Now piss off.”

“Get to work, you slugabed!”

“I _hate you_.”

Mick starts laughing, but consents to let Len go, following him curiously. The guardian of the underworld lopes over, grinning with all three heads. “What’s his name?” Mick asks.

Len looks shifty.

“ _Len_?”

“I named him Spot,” Len confesses. “Because he has a spot on his side, you see.”

Mick thinks about this for a long, horrified moment. “You are _never_ naming anything _ever again_ ,” he declares.

“Oh thank god,” Len says. “I’m so bad at it, you wouldn’t believe. Clever plans? Sure. Symbolic torments made to horrify and satisfy all listeners at every fireside story told from now to eternity? Got it covered. _Names?_ Gods above and below, help me, I’m hopeless.”

“You’ll have to tell me all about it sometime,” Mick says. “I look forward to having some decent blackmail material. Spot, _really_. I’m calling him Jesse. Or maybe Axel. I’ll think about it.”

Len leads him back to the receiving room, the open doors of his palace before which the souls of the dead teem before Len’s three judges, with the hardest cases referred to him and him alone.

Or – perhaps not him alone. Where traditionally this hall is centered around one great chair, and Mick knows this from his lessons on who and what and where, now there are two thrones, side by side, of equal magnificence. 

Mick drags Len into a closet and lets him emerge, weak-kneed and dazed but clearly satisfied, an hour or so later. A man’s gotta show his appreciation, after all.

They settle themselves into the swing of things and Mick…Mick _likes it_. 

No one in the land of the dead fears his fire, not even the ones in Elysium; what’s dead is dead and cannot suffer, after all. Well, the ones in Tartarus can suffer, but those people are pretty awful anyway – it all came out of them, squeezed like juice out of a lemon, when they sit on the scales before the judges, and nothing can be held back or hidden. The majority of humans go to the Fields, where they work and live and gather in increasingly large families until all human memory of them has faded away, and then they go to the River Lethe to drink from her shores and to be reborn once more. Mick’s real good at the whole rebirth business, and he cleans up that operation right away.

They don’t just sit around and judge all day, though; the Underworld requires a lot of maintenance and supervision, and they travel from one part of it to the next. It’s _fun_ being the boss. Technically, he is just the boss’ spouse, calls Len boss and everything, but Len calls Mick his partner, his right hand man, and he seems _dead_ serious about it, too.

Oh, yeah, and while Mick may have been wrong about Len being the god of stupid puns, he _shouldn’t_ have been, because Len is a fucking _dork_. He loves puns in all shapes and sizes, the worse the better. 

Fucking Lenny. 

(Which Mick does, as it happens. Quite a bit. He enjoys it, too.)

Oh, and they plan heists, too. Len is literally the master of invisibility, but most of the time he prefers to leave his helm at home and rely entirely on his stealth and cunning. Sometimes they steal souls – Len’s reputation as a thief in the night is almost entirely due to that, after all, because no one in their right mind would _actually_ accuse the Unseen One of literal theft. Though they should, because he is a thief, through and through, and he steals _everything_.

(Len develops a new habit of stealing kisses from Mick at inconvenient intervals. Mick can’t seem to make himself get properly angry at him for it.)

It’s after one of these heists, a good one where Mick got to burn things and Len got his take and they’re carting everything back home with them, laughing and cheerful and smug and ready to go “celebrate” their glorious victory, when Len abruptly goes still and silent.

“Barry, brother mine,” he drawls, long and slow. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company? I don’t see you much, here in my realms.”

“Oh, thank god, he is here,” Barry says, looking straight at Mick but speaking only to Len. “Len, you have to send him home.”

“Over my dead body,” Mick says immediately.

“Certainly not,” Len says at the same time. “We’re _married_. I’m not sending him home; don’t be absurd.”

Barry looks wretched. “Len, you need to send him home.”

“He’s my _husband_ ,” Len repeats. “I won him fair and square, by the oldest of rituals – I paid a bride price and won approval from his guardian to take him, I took his hand and asked him to come with me; he gave me a kiss and confirmed in words as well as deed. I stole him away in my chariot, just as our father and our grandfather before him won their wives. You have _no right_ to take him from me.”

“You don’t understand,” Barry says. “I didn’t _have_ the right to give him away – I mean, yes, technically, being the king of the gods, I did, but his Mother didn’t grant me permission to do it when she sent him to me.”

“You outrank her,” Mick points out. “Your word is binding.”

“She’s killing the world!” Barry exclaims miserably. “She’s starving it, refusing to let the crops grow until Mick’s returned; I’m the god of the lightning and the thunder, king of the gods, but I can’t make her do her job, and so the world starves.”

“That _bitch_ ,” Mick says.

“Mick!” Barry exclaims. “That’s your _Mother_!”

“Doesn’t make her any less of a bitch,” Mick points out.

“Amanda’s personality aside,” Len says, and his face is terrible with rage, “it does not change the facts. I _will not_ give him back, Barry. You take him from me; there will be war between us.”

Barry pulls away, his face ashen and desolate. “I cannot let my world starve,” he whispers. “I’m _sorry_ , Len. I know how much this means to you. But war or no war, Mick is going to return home to his Mother. You have until tomorrow to say your good-byes, and then I’m coming for him.”

With a crackle of thunder and a flash of light, Barry is gone.

Len’s hands are clenched into fists and the whole of the underworld quakes before him. Souls flee before him, Elysium and Fields and Tarturus alike, as the land itself belches forth miasma, black and greasy smoke that roils forth in waves and consumes all that it touches; the stuff of Chaos itself, barely held back in this most liminal of places, rips its way forth from the earth. The Fields begin to freeze over, dark black ice climbing the few trees that have managed to take root, the endless cold of the dark before the world began responding to Len’s anger as if it were a faithful dog. 

Mick would be angry, losing his temper the way he always does, but seeing Len in pain mutes that feeling, shoves it down. He puts his hand on Len’s arm. “Calm down, Lenny,” he instructs. “If you mess everything up, there’ll only be more to clean up later.”

“There won’t _be_ a later,” Len says, eyes hard and distant and cold. “I am the eldest of the children of Time; the throne of the gods was mine by birthright and I yielded it to my brother through the right of conquest, but I could have challenged him, if I had wanted to kill him and claim the throne of the god for my own. I _should_ have challenged him, if this is how he treats me and mine. I still don’t want a throne, but I will _not_ be denied.”

Mick shivers, and it’s not from cold. If anything, he feels warm, somewhere inside that desolation that wrecks the Underworld and the cold sick feeling that sat in his stomach the moment he heard what Barry said about his Mother; he feels warm because he knows Len means it, that Len would break the world in two for him if that’s what it took, and he knows that Len _could_ do it, too. 

The Underworld has many secrets, long forgotten to the world above, and its armies are beyond counting. Not just the dead, though they are loyal to their liege lord, but Len has taken Mick to the depths of the pit of Tartarus, to where the old gods are kept in chains, the Hecatonchires and the Titans and the old gods, the great forces of the universe, groan and beg for freedom, hissing threats and calumnies against their great enemy Time, for he betrayed them when he fell before the dawn of the new era. There is even that great old weapon, the sickle of Time, Kronos’ weapon against his own father, long thought lost, resting in some deep corner. It is a fearsome weapon, beyond those that are known today, beyond even the Smith God’s creations, but they have only one day before Barry returns in full force and power, king of the gods, and demands Mick’s return.

Time, alas, is the one thing that they don’t have.

_Time._

Mick starts smiling. “Lenny,” he says. “I think I have an idea.”

Len turns to him, shoulders losing their tension and going soft as Len visibly yields to him, releasing his temper and permitting Mick to take the lead.

Mick has that power over him, now. Mick has _power_ ; he’s not merely a child of the Harvest any longer. He’s in his own story now, _his_ story, not his Mother’s story, and he will take on a new godhead, just as he’d always planned, and he will make this story go the way _he_ wants it to.

He smiles, and Len quakes before him just as the Underworld quaked before Len in turn, but Len does not fear him. Len _loves_ him.

The next day, when Barry comes to them in pomp and circumstance, in his red suit of armor with the gold lines of his signature weapon zig-zagging throughout, they are seated upon their thrones in the main gate, waiting for him. Len is in black, his colors – the color of mourning, the color of death; Mick is in white and green. Snow and sprout, life and death. Len wears the ring Mick crafted for him upon his finger, and Mick’s mouth is stained red.

They are not impressed by Barry.

“Have you made your decision?” Barry says to Len, Mick’s Mother standing beside him with her lips tight and her arms crossed. “Will you return the Harvest child and stand down? Or will it be war between us?”

“No war,” Len says. “Mick will do as he likes.”

“Mick has already done as he likes,” Mick says, and smiles. He rises from his throne, Kronos’ scythe in his hand, and Barry recoils at the sight of it. 

“What did you do?” Barry asks, horror striped over his face.

“I’ve eaten six pomegranate seeds,” Mick replies, still smiling. “They say that nothing grows in the underworld for there is nothing here with life in its veins; that’s not true. We grew it out of Len’s own blood, as he still has life in his heart, pumping away its divine ichor to keep him moving. It is the first true food here, though not the last – and when you eat of the food of the dead, you become as the dead; that’s divine law, older than any of us.”

“And so the world will starve,” Mick’s Mother says, cool and implacable and cruel. 

“I only ate six,” Mick points out. “And there were twelve. Six months of the year I belong to the Underworld; six months above ground. When I am above, Mother, you will be pleased and the seeds buried will burst forth from the ground in the spring, just as I do; when I am below, it will be winter and they will be beneath the ground, just as I am.”

“You cannot decide that,” Mick’s Mother says angrily.

“Oh, but I can,” Mick says, and lifts his scythe – _his_ scythe, now. “For I am not merely the child of the Harvest, nor am I merely the partner of the Lord of the Underworld. I am _Kronos_ , for I am his grandson and lay claim to his name which has laid fallow. The seasons will follow in my footsteps and they will mark the passage of time, even in the absence of all other signs.” His smile widens. “And at the end of every year the Harvest will die, Mother, as the cold and the frost eat it alive. In honor of your _grief_.”

“And I will give you, my _brother_ , a gift of mine,” Len speaks, his voice low and harsh, his hand on his scepter and his helm hiding his eyes until all that could be seen was the glare of the shining dark. “You gave me my love by the ancient laws, at your sister’s wedding, and now you break your word to steal him away. That is your decision; I will not war with you over it. My love leaves me in the spring by his own free will and returns to me in the fall, but it is in the summer that you keep him away from my side, and so this is _my_ decision: the summer heat will roil men’s blood and heat their tempers. Summer will be the time of war and of blood and of death, of _my_ domain upon the Earth, the time when the depths of the Underworld reach up and seize the hearts of men. You gave to me and you took away; and so I will take and give, as well. I take away your peace, your quiet, your _Golden Age_ , and give you men of iron instead of gold. That is my gift to you, Barry, upon the wedding of your sister. May you _choke_ on it.”

Barry shakes before him. “Len,” he says softly. “Don’t – please – the humans did nothing – ”

Len raises up his hand, and his smile is grim. “You’re the king of the gods, Barry,” he says. “You’re responsible for humanity; you are their guardian and your decisions affect them, that is who and what you are. You have the power to do what you will; you could have forced _her_ to yield her claim and return to her work by threatening her as you did me, but in your cowardice and desire to do the ‘right thing’, you decided to rob me instead. You get exactly what you deserve. I have said what I have to say, and before my witness.”

He waves his hand, and the Styx steps forward, the shining dark river nymph, the implacable Nemesis of the gods, witness of oaths and of dooms. Its face changes the way the Lethe’s does, but unlike the Lethe’s perfect imitations, its are always slightly _off_ somehow, its power and might seeping through the cracks. The Styx has no human name; it is _la force des choses_ , the inexorable present, the Speed Force, the power that grants all gods their power. “So will it be,” it says, its voice hard as iron and utterly inhuman. 

“Congrats, Barry,” Len says softly to his brother. “You got what you wanted, and without a war between the gods, no less. Good job.”

Mick’s Mother turns away with a snarl of rage. Mick follows her peacefully towards the trail of light that leads him back to the world of light, away from his lover and his home. He turns back with a smile. “Come visit,” he orders and Len smiles, his real smile, not the terrible thing of awful might, that callback to the days before humans walked the earth. 

“Sure, boss,” Len says, his voice light and fond. “Whatever you say.” His smile widens. “Just remember Mick – you might _spring_ up to there, but in six months, you _fall_ back here.”

Mick rolls his eyes. 

His partner, ladies and gentlemen; the mighty Lord of the Underworld, thief of souls, master of all that is dark and deep and frightening. 

_Dork._

**Author's Note:**

> One of my majors in college was religious studies, with a concentration on comparative mythology. The major impact of this is that I feel DEEPLY ASHAMED of how much I bastardized Greek mythology (and oh, was it ever bastardized), but was also super into it at the same time. 
> 
> In case anyone didn't get who's who:  
> Mick - Persephone  
> Len - Hades  
> Demeter - Amanda Waller (Argus = many-eyed watchman)  
> Barry - Zeus  
> Eobard - Kronos  
> Wally - Triton (Poseidon's son)  
> Joe - Poseidon  
> Jesse Quick - Hermes  
> Cisco - Hephaestus  
> Caitlin - Khione  
> Lisa - Aphrodite  
> Iris - Helios  
> Eddie - Eos  
> Mardon - Charon  
> Hannibal Bates - Lethe  
> Shawna - Thanatos  
> Axel/Jessie - Cerberus  
> Speed Force - Styx


End file.
